Thursday

I thought I'd make a blog post since I'm sitting in front of my computer with a few minutes of free time, but I don't really have a lot to blog about! The past couple of days have been pretty boring. Josh has been at Scout camp and Shawn had to work late tonight, so we haven't really been doing anything too exciting.

I'm really looking forward to next week though because Shawn has the whole week off and we have some plans to tackle some projects. My mom does a special cousins camp for all the grandkids every summer, so the boys will be going to that for part of next week. Normally we drop the boys off and Shawn and I go somewhere for a few days by ourselves, but this year we'll have Clarissa with us so we decided to use the time to stay home and get some projects done instead.

We have a playroom in our basement that I have had big plans for since we moved here five years ago and I've still never gotten around to really doing anything with it. Because it's in the basement and I don't go down there all that often it's been easy for me to ignore and it always gets pushed to the back of my to-do list. But suddenly I'm really excited about tackling that room and giving it some personality.

It's kind of just a small family room with a couch and an entertainment center in it. There is a toybox in the corner where all the unused toys get tossed. There is also a toy closet down there that has toys that no one has played with in a really long time. The walls are white, I've never hung anything on the walls and it looks really boring and plain. The kids play Wii down there and they like to sleep down there sometimes in the summer but that's pretty much all that goes on down there. I think we'd all enjoy that room a lot more if we organized it, decorated it and turned it into a real usable room instead of just the basement catch all room.

So next week I think we're going to paint it, I'm going to find some cute things to hang on the walls, I'm hoping to make some curtains for the windows and we're going to go through all the toys and make a donation box to get rid of all the things that are just collecting dust down there so that the kids will be able to more easily enjoy the things they do play with. Now that we have a toddler in the house again we have a lot more toys out on a daily basis and we need a better way to organize them so I'm not tripping over them. With the boys gone for a few days and Shawn home all week I think we should be able to whip that room into shape. One of the biggest reasons we bought this house is because it has a basement, which is hard to find around here, so it's silly to me that we've never taken full advantage of it.

So that's my plan for next week. As far as the rest of this week goes, we don't really have a lot going on. Today I tried to take Clarissa outside and get some cute pictures of her and I failed to get any for the millionth time! I've never seen a kid who hates having her picture taken as much as Clarissa does! Clarissa is just a busy kid anyway and she doesn't like to slow down long enough for me to snap a few photos. I've given up trying to pose her for photos so lately I've just been chasing her around trying to get some cute candids. I pretty much just end up with a lot of pictures of the back of her head as she runs away, lol. I guess if photos are supposed to capture the personality of the subject, the back of Clarissa's head as she runs off to explore is pretty accurate.

What I'm loving most about Clarissa these days is that she's starting to talk and every word that comes out of her mouth is ridiculously adorable. She's like a little parrot, we like saying a word and getting her to repeat it. Talking is a fairly new thing for her so I'm always really surprised when she says something spontaniously. Her words are still hit and miss and she's not really putting sentences together or anything, but every now and then she'll say something that surprises me. Yesterday she looked around and said "Where's Josh?". When she's thirsty and wants something to drink she'll bring me her cup and say "please!". I never get tired of that. She says other words, like cracker, kitty, mom, daddy, hi, bye, car, uh oh, cheese, banana, no, me, and she makes super cute animal sounds. She can baahh like a sheep really well. We have a board book of animals that she loves and we always baahh when we get to the sheep page. She also barks at the dog page. She will also point to things and say "what's that?". Her voice is so sweet, I love hearing it. Tonight I was trying to get her to say "ahnyoung" which is the informal Korean word for hi. She attemped it, it was super cute! I'm going to keep working on it. I love watching her learn, she seriously melts my heart.

I just looked at the clock and noticed that it's almost 11:30, so I'm off to bed! Tomorrow is another adventure!